medical expenses
such as ambulance, hospital, and doctors' fees, medication, and rehabilitation

compensation payments

Workplace Safety
and Insurance Board (WSIB) premium increases

litigation costs.

The average WSIB
cost of one lost-time injury in construction is $35,000. In most cases,
direct costs are covered by the WSIB and therefore have little or no immediate
impact on profits. But they do impact on future profits, since they drive
up the cost of doing business.

Indirect costs include
disrupted work schedules, lost productivity, clean-up and repair, hiring
and training replacement workers, bad publicity, and time spent on accident
investigation, claims management, and litigation.

CSAO has found that
the average ratio of indirect to direct costs in Ontario construction
is 5 to 1. Indirect costs exert an immediate impact and usually result
in lost profits.

Research

Recent studies indicate
that investing in health and safety can yield financial advantages. Some
highlights:

Accident prevention
can be improved without higher costs and slower schedules.

Workplace injuries
account for 6-9% of project costs whereas an effective health and safety
program accounts for only 2.5% of those costs.

The higher the
safety investment in a project, the lower the injury rates and the higher
the profit.

Increased training,
more frequent inspections, and more health and safety meetings with
field supervisors result in fewer lost-time injuries, lower costs, and
a larger profit margin.

CSAO found that
construction workers with back injuries who participate in a back care
program are less likely to be re-injured than those who don't participate.

Potential benefits

Too often, contractors
are reluctant to invest in health and safety because of limited resources
or because they don't realize the potential benefit to both the workforce
and the company.

The investment naturally
costs money in the short run but in the long run it can save lives, reduce
injuries, and increase profit.

This can be vital
to a contractor's financial health during bust as well as boom times.

Graphs
reproduced from A.J. Joseph, "Safety costs money and can save money" in
Singh, Hinze, and Coble (editors),Implementation of Health and Safety on Construction Sites, 1999